More than 23 years ago, I was a member of a few bands in Bandung – Jawa Barat, a small city with many creative citizens and their activities from arts to musics. I used to be a vocalist, drummer, rhythm guitarist and ended up as a lead guitarist. Played anything from pop to thrash metal, but mostly industrial rock and hardcore.
During my college in Bandung Institute of Technology, most of my time was spent to study hard for the industrial design. There always be a time when I have to take my rollercoaster of mood and emotions, somehow it affects my creativity in developing a design, the results are sometimes uncanny and I have to get stuck in the dead end of the mind-blowing labyrinth of ideas with no good result at all.
But lucky for me, I don’t need to get high nor go to a shrink to find my way out of the mood maze. My bandmates are amazingly very good at creating songs, they introduced me to computer programs where I started learn to create music as a multi instrumentalist through digital sampling. You can easily found the old-time softwares like Modplug Tracker, Soundforge and Cakewalk Audio from the computer stores at that time.
I created many songs, but I never take them to the rehearsals with my bands, I just want to keep it for myself. Moreover, the music genre itself might not be suitable for my bands, so I just use it for my lullaby or my way out from the boredom of design study things. It has become my habit to visualise my mood through music. However, everything was just stopped when I got a job and started my days as an employee…and then everyday passes just exactly the same with no other creative activity but designing things for my employer.
Nowadays, Garageband from Apple seems to be more familiar for most of us as a digital music program or just for fun. After all these times, I only used my Apple devices for communications, drawing sketches and do my office works, I never used it as my musical recording device. I remember back in my days, I saw some pictures of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross developing their outstanding musics for Nine Inch Nails “The Fragile” album, they use Apple computer…I don’t know exactly what the software is…but it was an Apple software for sure, I assumed it was Garageband.
Now…the sounds of music keep calling me to write one or two notes every time I see my guitars & computer. So I decided to go back to where I started it all over again, creating music..maybe it’s just for my own…or my family, but one thing for sure, old habits die hard.